The meaning of Dyeus

Dyeus Pita

Theism, in the field of comparative religion, is the belief that at least one deity exists. In popular parlance, the term theism often describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and Hinduism.

The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning “god”. The term theism was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–88). In Cudworth’s definition, they are “strictly and properly called Theists, who affirm, that a perfectly conscious understanding being, or mind, existing of itself from eternity, was the cause of all other things”.

Atheism is rejection of theism in the broadest sense of theism; i.e. the rejection of belief that there is even one deity. Rejection of the narrower sense of theism can take forms such as deism, pantheism, and polytheism. The claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is agnosticism.

The positive assertion of knowledge, either of the existence of gods or the absence of gods, can also be attributed to some theists and some atheists. Put simply, theism and atheism deal with belief, and agnosticism deals with rational claims to asserting knowledge.

Theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might for example include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several different related meanings.

A theory is not the same as a hypothesis. A theory provides an explanatory framework for some observation and from the assumptions of the explanation follows a number of possible hypotheses that can be tested in order to provide support for, or challenge, the theory.

A theory can be normative (or prescriptive), meaning a postulation about what ought to be. It provides “goals, norms, and standards”. A theory can be a body of knowledge, which may or may not be associated with particular explanatory models. To theorize is to develop this body of knowledge.

Theoria is Greek for contemplation. It corresponds to the Latin word contemplatio, “looking at”, “gazing at”, “being aware of,” and it is an important term in theology.

The Greek theoria, from which the English word “theory” is derived, (and theatre) meant “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”, from theorein “to consider, speculate, look at”, from theoros “spectator”, from thea “a view” + horan “to see”. It expressed the state of being a spectator. Both Greek θεωρία and Latin contemplatio primarily meant looking at things, whether with the eyes or with the mind.

Taking philosophical and theological traditions into consideration, the term was used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the act of experiencing or observing and then comprehending through consciousness, which is called the nous or “eye of the soul” (Matthew 6:22–34).

Nous, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a philosophical term for the faculty of the human mind which is described in classical philosophy as necessary for understanding what is true or real.

The three commonly used philosophical terms are from Greek, νοῦς or νόος, and Latin intellectus and intelligentia respectively. To describe the activity of this faculty, apart from verbs based on “understanding”, the word “intellection” is sometimes used in philosophical contexts, and the Greek words noēsis and noein are sometimes also used. This activity is understood in a similar way, at least in some contexts, to the modern concept intuition.

In philosophy, common English translations include “understanding” and “mind”; or sometimes “thought” or “reason” (in the sense of that which reasons, not the activity of reasoning). It is also often described as something equivalent to perception except that it works within the mind (“the mind’s eye”). It has been suggested that the basic meaning is something like “awareness”. In colloquial British English, nous also denotes “good sense”, which is close to one everyday meaning it had in Ancient Greece.

This diagram shows the medieval understanding of spheres of the cosmos, derived from Aristotle, and as per the standard explanation by Ptolemy. It came to be understood that at least the outermost sphere (marked “Primũ Mobile”) has its own intellect, intelligence or nous – a cosmic equivalent to the human mind.

In Aristotle’s influential works, the term was carefully distinguished from sense perception, imagination and reason, although these terms are closely inter-related. The term was apparently already singled out by earlier philosophers such as Parmenides, whose works are largely lost. In post-Aristotelian discussions, the exact boundaries between perception, understanding of perception, and reasoning have not always agreed with the definitions of Aristotle, even though his terminology remains influential.

In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness which allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. This therefore connects discussion of nous, to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories the same logical ways.

Deriving from this it was also sometimes argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type. By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it.

Such explanations were influential in the development of medieval accounts of God, the immortality of the soul, and even the motions of the stars, in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, amongst both eclectic philosophers and authors representing all the major faiths of their times.

Insight into being and becoming (called noesis) through the intuitive truth called faith, in God (action through faith and love for God), leads to truth through our contemplative faculties.

This theory, or speculation, as action in faith and love for God, is then expressed famously as “Beauty shall Save the World”. This expression comes from a mystical or gnosiological perspective, rather than a scientific, philosophical or cultural one.

Christianity took up the use of both the Greek (theoria) and Latin (contemplatio, contemplation) terminology to describe various forms of prayer and the process of coming to know God. Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity grew apart as they incorporated the general notion of theoria into their respective teachings.

Several scholars have also demonstrated the similarities between the Greek idea of theoria and the Indian idea of darśana (darshan), a term meaning “auspicious sight” (in the sense of an instance of seeing or beholding and being seen or beheld at the same time; from a root dṛś “to see”), vision, apparition, or glimpse.

Darśana is most commonly used for theophany, “manifestation / visions of the divine” in Hindu worship, e.g. of a deity (especially in image form), or a very holy person or artifact. One could also “receive” darshana or a glimpse of the deity in the temple, or from a great saintly person, such as a great guru.

In the sense “to see with reverence and devotion,” the term translates to hierophany, and could refer either to a vision of the divine or to being in the presence of a highly revered person. In this sense it may assume a meaning closer to audience. “By doing darshan properly a devotee develops affection for God, and God develops affection for that devotee.”

Darshan is ultimately difficult to define, since it is an event in consciousness—an interaction in presence between devotee and God/guru; or between devotee and image or sculpture, which focuses and calls out the consciousness of the devotee. In either event, a heightening of consciousness or spirituality is the intended effect.

Theophany (from Ancient Greek theophaneia, meaning “appearance of a god”) refers to the appearance of a deity to a human or other being. This term has been used to refer to appearances of the gods in the ancient Greek and Near Eastern religions. While the Iliad is the earliest source for descriptions of theophanies in the Classical tradition (and they occur throughout Greek mythology), probably the earliest description of a theophany is in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The term theophany has acquired a specific usage for Christians and Jews with respect to the Bible: It refers to the manifestation of God to man; the sensible sign by which the presence of God is revealed. Only a small number of theophanies are found in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament.

A diagram is a two-dimensional geometric (can be three-dimensional also) symbolic representation of information according to some visualization technique. They have been used since ancient times but they became more prevalent during the Enlightenment. Sometimes, the technique uses a three-dimensional visualization which is then projected onto the two-dimensional surface. The word graph is sometimes used as a synonym for diagram.

In geometry, the diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for the diameter of a sphere. The word “diameter” is derived from Greek diametros, “diameter of a circle”, from dia-, “across, through” + metron, “measure”.

In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it – for example, the point at 5 on a number line.

A surface such as a plane or the surface of a cylinder or sphere has a dimension of two because two coordinates are needed to specify a point on it – for example, both a latitude and longitude are required to locate a point on the surface of a sphere. The inside of a cube, a cylinder or a sphere is three-dimensional because three coordinates are needed to locate a point within these spaces.

In classical mechanics, space and time are different categories and refer to absolute space and time. That conception of the world is a four-dimensional space but not the one that was found necessary to describe electromagnetism.

The four dimensions of spacetime consist of events that are not absolutely defined spatially and temporally, but rather are known relative to the motion of an observer. Minkowski space first approximates the universe without gravity; the pseudo-Riemannian manifolds of general relativity describe spacetime with matter and gravity. Ten dimensions are used to describe string theory, and the state-space of quantum mechanics is an infinite-dimensional function space.

The concept of dimension is not restricted to physical objects. High-dimensional spaces frequently occur in mathematics and the sciences. They may be parameter spaces or configuration spaces such as in Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics; these are abstract spaces, independent of the physical space we live in.

In religious belief, a deity is a supernatural being, who may be thought of as holy, godly, or sacred. Some religions have one supreme deity, while others have multiple deities of various ranks. Scott Littleton’s Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology defined a deity as “a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life”.

Deities are depicted in a variety of forms, but are also frequently expressed as having human form. Some faiths and traditions consider it blasphemous to imagine or depict the deity as having any concrete form. Deities are often thought to be immortal, and are commonly assumed to have personalities and to possess consciousness, intellects, desires, and emotions comparable but usually superior to those of humans. A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess.

Historically, natural phenomena whose causes were not well understood, such as lightning and catastrophes such as earthquakes and floods, were attributed to deities. They were thought to be able to work supernatural miracles and to be the authorities and controllers of various aspects of human life (such as birth or an afterlife). Some deities were asserted to be the directors of time and fate itself, the givers of human law and morality, the ultimate judges of human worth and behavior, or designers of the Universe, instead of being a natural result of the laws of physics.

The concept of “divinity” in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens, as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram for “sky”, and that its original shape is the picture of a star. The original association of “divinity” is thus with “bright” or “shining” hierophanies in the sky.

In religious belief, a deity is a supernatural being, who may be thought of as holy, godly, or sacred. Some religions have one supreme deity, while others have multiple deities of various ranks.

The word “deity” derives from the Latin deus (“god”), which is related through a common Indo-European origin to Sanskrit deva (“god”), devi (“goddess”), divya (“transcendental”, “spiritual”). The root is related to words for “sky”, such as Latin dies (“day”), and the Sanskrit div, diu (“sky”, “day”, “shine”).

The word diary comes from the Latin diarium (“daily allowance,” from dies “day”). The word journal comes from the same root (diurnus “of the day”) through Old French jurnal (modern French for day is jour).

In religious terms, divinity or godhead is the state of things that come from a supernatural power or deity, such as a god, a supreme being, a creator god or a spirit, and are therefore regarded as sacred and holy. Such things are regarded as “divine” due to their transcendental origins, and/or because their attributes or qualities are superior or supreme relative to things of the Earth.

Divine things are regarded as eternal and based in truth, while material things are regarded as ephemeral and based in illusion. Such things that may qualify as “divine” are apparitions, visions, prophecies, miracles, and in some views also the soul, or more general things like resurrection, immortality, grace, and salvation. Otherwise what is or is not divine may be loosely defined, as it is used by different belief systems.

The root of the word “divine” is literally “godly” (from the Latin deus, cf. Dyaus, closely related to Greek zeus, div in Persian and deva in Sanskrit), but the use varies significantly depending on which deity is being discussed. This article outlines the major distinctions in the conventional use of the terms.

Theism is the view that at least one deity exists. Some religions are monotheistic and assert the existence of a unique deity. In the English language, the common noun god is equivalent to deity, while the proper noun God (capitalized) references the unique deity of monotheism.

Pantheism considers the universe itself to be a deity. Dualism is the view that there are two deities: a deity of good who is opposed and thwarted by a deity of evil, of equal power. Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Gnostic sects of Christianity are, or were, dualist.

Polytheism asserts the existence of several deities, who together form a pantheon. Monolatry is a type of polytheism in which the existence of multiple deities is recognized, but worship is given only to one. Henotheism is a form of polytheism in which only one deity is worshipped. Animism is the belief that spirits inhabit every existing thing, including plants, minerals, animals, and, including all the elements, air, water, earth, and fire. The anthropologist E. B. Tylor argued that religion originally took an animist form.

Adherents of polytheistic religions, such as certain schools of Hinduism, may regard all deities in the pantheon as manifestations, aspects, or multiple personalities of the single supreme deity, and the religions may be more akin to pantheism, monotheism, or henotheism than is initially apparent to an observer.

The many religions do not generally agree on which deities exist, although sometimes the pantheons may overlap, or be similar except for the names of the deities. It is frequently argued that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship the same monotheistic deity, although they differ in many important details. Comparative religion studies the similarities and contrasts in the views and practices of various religions.

Philosophy of religion discusses philosophical issues related to theories about deities. Anthropology of religion studies religious institutions in relation to other social institutions, the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures, and describes each religion as a cultural product, created by the human community that worships it.

Narratives about deities and their deeds are referred to as myths, the study of which is mythology. The word “myth” has an overtone of fiction, so religious people commonly (although not invariably) refrain from using this term in relation to the stories about deities which they themselves believe in.

In Christian theology, divinization (deification, making divine, or theosis) is the transforming effect of divine grace, the spirit of God, or the atonement of Christ. It literally means to become more divine, more like God, or take upon a divine nature.

According to Hierotheos Vlachos, divinization, also called theosis, “is the participation in the Uncreated grace of God” and “is identified and connected with the theoria (vision) of the Uncreated Light”. “Theoria is the vision of the glory of God. Theoria is identified with the vision of the uncreated Light, the uncreated energy of God, with the union of man with God, with man’s theosis.

This vision, by which faith is attained, is what saves: “Faith comes by hearing the Word and by experiencing theoria (the vision of God). We accept faith at first by hearing in order to be healed, and then we attain to faith by theoria, which saves man.” It is also one of the means by which Christians came to know the Trinity: “The disciples of Christ acquired the knowledge of the Triune God in theoria (vision of God) and by revelation.”

For many Church Fathers, theosis goes beyond simply restoring people to their state before the Fall of Adam and Eve, teaching that because Christ united the human and divine natures in Jesus’ person, it is now possible for someone to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam and Eve initially experienced in the Garden of Eden, and that people can become more like God than Adam and Eve were at that time. Some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic theologians go so far as to say that Jesus would have become incarnate for this reason alone, even if Adam and Eve had never sinned.

Polytheistic peoples of many cultures have postulated a Thunder God, the personification or source of the forces of thunder and lightning; a lightning god does not have a typical depiction, and will vary based on the culture.

In Indo-European cultures, the Thunder God is frequently known as the chief or king of the gods, e.g. Indra in Hinduism, Zeus in Greek mythology, and Perun in ancient Slavic religion; or a close relation thereof, e.g. Thor, son of Odin, in Norse mythology. This is also true of *Shango in Yorùbá religion and in the syncretic religions of the African Diaspora, such as Santería (Cuba, Puerto Rico, U.S. and Candomblé (Brazil).

In Greek mythology, The Elysian Fields, or the Elysian Plains, the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous, evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios. This could be a reference to Zeus, the god of lightning/Jupiter, so “lightning-struck” could be saying that the person was blessed (struck) by Zeus (/lightning/fortune).

Egyptologist Jan Assmann has also suggested that Greek Elysion may have instead been derived from the Egyptian term ialu (older iaru), meaning “reeds,” with specific reference to the “Reed fields” (Egyptian: sekhet iaru / ialu), a paradisiacal land of plenty where the dead hoped to spend eternity.

The sky has important religious significance. Most polytheistic religions have a deity associated with the sky. In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother”.

“Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically identical to the Greek Zeus Pater. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, the concept is far from universal (e.g. Egyptian mythology has a “Heavenly Mother”). Dia (Greek: “heavenly”, “divine” or “she who belongs to Zeus”), in ancient Greek religion and folklore, may refer to:

In late 19th century opinions on comparative religion, in a line of thinking that begins with Friedrich Engels and J. J. Bachofen, and which received major literary promotion in The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer, it was believed that worship of a sky father was characteristic of nomadic peoples, and that worship of an earth mother similarly characterised farming peoples.

This view was stylized as reflecting not only a conflict of nomadism vs. agriculturalism but of “patriarchy” vs. “matriarchy”, and has blossomed into a late ideological in certain currents of feminist spirituality and feminist archaeology in the 1970s.

It is important to note that in mythology, the daylit sky is typically distinct from the night-time heavens of the stars. Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature reflects this by separating the category of Sky-god (A210) from that of Star-god (A250), both within the chapter dedicated to “gods of the upper world” (although in some mythologies, the night sky is associated with the netherworld)

Masculine sky gods are often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such gods are collectively categorised as Sky father deities. A polarity between sky and earth is often expressed by pairing a “Sky father” god with an Earth mother goddess (more rarely, a sky goddess and an earth god).

Many polytheistic mythologies make a clear distinction between the celestial realm (or upper world) and the chtonic realm or netherworld. In such cases, there may be a main pair of deities who rule the sky as husband and wife (for example, Zeus and Hera in ancient Greece), while a different pair of deities (e.g., Hades and Persephone) rule the chthonic realms.

When there was a main sky goddess, she often held the title of the “Queen of Heaven” or “Heavenly Mother”. Another notable example of a sky god and goddess was the ancient Semitic supreme god El, who was most likely paired with the sky goddess Asherah.

Deva is the Sanskrit word for deity. Its related feminine term is devi. Devas, in Hinduism, can be loosely described as any benevolent supernatural being. In Hinduism, Devas are also called Suras and are often mentioned in the same context as their half-brothers the Asuras. Devas are also the maintainers of the realms as ordained by the Trimurti. They are often warring with their equally powerful counterparts, the Asuras.

The Sanskrit deva- derives from Indo-Iranian *dev- which in turn descends from the Proto-Indo-European word, *deiwos, originally an adjective meaning “celestial” or “shining”, which is a (not synchronic Sanskrit) vrddhi derivative from the root *diw meaning “to shine”, especially as the day-lit sky. The feminine form of *deiwos is *deiwih2, which descends into Indic languages as devi, in that context meaning “female deity”.

Also deriving from *deiwos, and thus cognates of deva, are Lithuanian Dievas (Latvian Dievs, Prussian Deiwas), Germanic Tiwaz (seen in English “Tuesday”) and the related Old Norse Tivar (gods), and Latin deus “god” and divus “divine”, from which the English words “divine”, “deity”, French “dieu”, Portuguese “deus”, Spanish “dios” and Italian “dio”, also “Zeys/Ζεύς” – “Dias/Δίας”, the Greek father of the gods, are derived.

Related but distinct is the proper name *Dyeus which while from the same root may originally have referred to the “heavenly shining father”, and hence to “Father Sky”, the chief God of the Indo-European pantheon, continued in Sanskrit Dyaus. The abode of the Devas is Dyuloka, a Sanskrit term for “heavenly abode”, first recorded in the Upanishads.

Devī is the Sanskrit root-word of Divine; its related masculine term is Deva. Devi is synonymous with Shakti, the female aspect of the divine, as conceptualized by the Shakta tradition of Hinduism. She is the female counterpart without whom the male aspect, which represents consciousness or discrimination, remains impotent and void. Goddess worship is an integral part of Hinduism.

Devi is, quintessentially, the core form of every Hindu Goddess. As the female manifestation of the supreme lord, she is also called Prakriti, as she balances out the male aspect of the divine addressed Purusha.

Devi or Durga is the Supreme Being in the Shaktism tradition of Hinduism, while in the Smartha tradition she is one of the five primary forms of God. In other Hindu traditions, Devi embodies the active energy and power of male deities (Purushas), such as Vishnu in Vaishnavism or Shiva in Shaivism. Vishnu’s shakti counterpart is called Lakshmi, with Parvati being the female shakti of Shiva.

A deva in Buddhism is one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, much happier than humans, although none of them are worthy of worship.

Synonyms in other languages include Khmer tep, or preah, Myanmar language nat, Tibetan lha, Mongolian tenger, Chinese tiān rén, Korean cheon, Japanese ten, Vietnamese thiên, Thai thep, thewa, thewada, etc. The concept of devas was adopted in Japan partly because of the similarity to the Shinto’s concept of kami.

Other words used in Buddhist texts to refer to similar supernatural beings are dēvatā (“deity”) and dēvaputra (“son of god”). It is unclear what the distinction between these terms is.

Daeva (daēuua, daāua, daēva) is an Avestan language term for a particular sort of supernatural entity with disagreeable characteristics. In the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrian canon, the daevas are “wrong gods” or “false gods” or “gods that are (to be) rejected”.

This meaning is – subject to interpretation – perhaps also evident in the Old Persian “daiva inscription” of the 5th century BCE. In the Younger Avesta, the daevas are noxious creatures that promote chaos and disorder. In later tradition and folklore, the dēws (Zoroastrian Middle Persian; New Persian divs) are personifications of every imaginable evil.

Daeva, the Iranian language term, should not be confused with the devas of Indian religions. While the word for the Vedic spirits and the word for the Zoroastrian entities are etymologically related, their function and thematic development is altogether different. The once-widespread notion that the radically different functions of Iranian daeva and Indic deva (and ahura versus asura) represented a prehistoric inversion of roles is no longer followed in 21st century academic discourse (see In comparison with Vedic usage for details).

Equivalents for Avestan daeva in Iranian languages include Pashto, Balochi, Kurdish dêw, Persian dīv/deev, all of which apply to demons, monsters, and other villainous creatures. The Iranian word was borrowed into Old Armenian as dew, Georgian as devi, and Urdu as deo, with the same negative associations in those languages. In English, the word appears as daeva, div, deev, and in the 18th century fantasy novels of William Thomas Beckford as dive.

Dyēus (also *Dyēus phter, alternatively spelled dyēws) is believed to have been chief deity in the religious traditions of the prehistoric Proto-Indo-European societies. Part of a larger pantheon, he was the god of the daylight sky, and his position may have mirrored the position of the patriarch or monarch in society. In his aspect as a father god, his consort would have been Pltwih Mhter, “Earth Mother”.

This deity is not directly attested; rather scholars have reconstructed this deity from the languages and cultures of later Indo-European peoples such as Greeks, Latins and Indo-Aryans. According to this scholarly reconstruction, Dyeus was addressed as Dyeu Phter, literally “Sky father” or “shining father”, as reflected in Latin Iūpiter, Diēspiter, possibly Dis Pater and deus pater, Greek Zeu pater, Sanskrit Dyàuṣpítaḥ.

As the pantheons of the individual mythologies related to the Proto-Indo-European religion evolved, attributes of Dyeus seem to have been redistributed to other deities. In Greek and Roman mythology, Dyeus remained the chief god, but in Vedic mythology, the etymological continuant of Dyeus became a very abstract god, and his original attributes, and his dominance over other gods, seem to have been transferred to gods such as Agni or Indra.

Rooted in the related but distinct Indo-European word *deiwos is the Latin word for deity, deus. The Latin word is also continued in English divine, “deity”, and the original Germanic word remains visible in “Tuesday” (“Day of Tīwaz”) and Old Norse tívar, which may be continued in the toponym Tiveden (“Wood of the Gods”, or of Týr).

The name Tuesday derives from the Old English “Tiwesdæg” and literally means “Tiw’s Day”. The Latin name dies Martis (“day of Mars”) is equivalent to the Greek. In most languages with Latin origins the day is named after Mars, the Ancient Greek Ares. Tuesday is associated with the planet Mars and shares that planet’s symbol, ♂. As Mars rules over Aries and Scorpio, these signs are also associated with Tuesday.

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Mars was the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter and he was the most prominent of the military gods in the religion of the Roman army. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him (Latin Martius), and in October, which began the season for military campaigning and ended the season for farming.

Under the influence of Greek culture, Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares, whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Tuesdays are dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure in Christianity, Islam (known as Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā), the Bahá’í Faith, and Mandaeism.

John is described as having the unique practice of baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Most scholars agree that John baptized Jesus. Scholars generally believe Jesus was a follower or disciple of John and several New Testament accounts report that some of Jesus’ early followers had previously been followers of John.

John the Baptist is also mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus. Some scholars maintain that John was influenced by the semi-ascetic Essenes, who expected an apocalypse and practiced rituals corresponding strongly with baptism, although no direct evidence substantiates this.

According to the New Testament, John anticipated a messianic figure greater than himself, and Jesus was the one whose coming John foretold. Christians commonly refer to John as the precursor or forerunner of Jesus, since John announces Jesus’ coming. John is also identified with the prophet Elijah.

In some Slavic languages the word Tuesday originated from Old Church Slavonic word въторъ meaning “the second” (Serbian: уторак (utorak)). Bulgarian and Russian “Вторник” (Vtornik) is derived from the Bulgarian and Russian adjective for ‘Second’ – “Втори” (Vtori) or “Второй” (Vtoroi)

In Japanese, the word Tuesday is ka youbi, meaning ‘fire day’ and is associated with kasei: Mars (the planet), literally meaning “fire star”. Similarly, in Korean the word Tuesday is hwa yo il, also meaning fire day.

In the Indo-Aryan languages Pali and Sanskrit, as well as in Thailand, the name of the day is taken from Angaraka (‘one who is red in colour’) a style (manner of address) for Mangal, the god of war, and for Mars, the red planet.

Although some of the more iconic reflexes of Dyeus are storm deities, such as Zeus and Jupiter, this is thought to be a late development exclusive to mediterranean traditions, probably derived from syncretism with Canaanite deities and Perkwunos.

The deity’s original domain was over the daylit sky, and indeed reflexes emphasise this connection to light: Istanu (Tiyaz) is a solar deity, Helios is often referred to as the “eye of Zeus”, in Romanian paganism the Sun is similarly called “God’s eye” and in Indo-Iranian tradition Surya/Hvare-khshaeta is similarly associated with Ahura Mazda. Even in roman tradition, Jupiter often is only associated with diurnal lightning at most, while Summanus is a deity responsible for nocturnal lightning or storms as a whole.

Jupiter or Jove, from Iuppiter, deriving from the Proto-Indo-European vocative *dyeu-ph2tēr (“Sky Father”), deriving from the root *dyeu- (“to shine”, and in its many derivatives, “sky, heaven, god”), the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, was the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder in myth. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek, di-we and di-wo, written in the Linear B syllabic script.

Dyauṣ Pitrā, literally “Sky Father” is the ancient sky god of Vedic pantheon, husband of Prithvi and father of Ushas (Dawn), Ratri (night) and the chief deities. He appear alongside Mata Prithvi “Mother Earth”. He is the father of the chief deities, and was seen as the father of Indra.

The name Dyauṣ Pitā is exactly parallel to the Greek Zeus Pater etymologically and closely related to Latin Ju Piter. Both Dyauṣ and Zeus reflect a Proto-Indo-European *Dyeus. Based on this reconstruction the widespread opinion in scholarship has been that Indra replaced Dyaus as the chief god of the early Indo-Aryans. While Prthivi survives as a Hindu goddess after the end of the Vedic period, Dyaus Pita became almost unknown already in antiquity.

The noun dyaús (when used without the pitā “father”) means “sky, heaven” and occurs frequently in the Rigveda, as a mythological entity, but not as a male deity: the sky in Vedic mythology was imagined as rising in three tiers, avama , madhyama, and uttama or tṛtīya (RV 5.60.6). In the Purusha Suktam (10.90.14), the sky is described to have been created from the head of the primaeval being, the Purusha.

He was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as sacrifice.

Jupiter is usually thought to have originated as a sky god. His identifying implement is the thunderbolt, and his primary sacred animal is the eagle, which held precedence over other birds in the taking of auspices and became one of the most common symbols of the Roman army.

The two emblems were often combined to represent the god in the form of an eagle holding in its claws a thunderbolt, frequently seen on Greek and Roman coins. As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend.

Many of his functions were focused on the Capitoline (“Capitol Hill”), where the citadel was located. He was the chief deity of the early Capitoline Triad with Mars and Quirinus. In the later Capitoline Triad, he was the central guardian of the state with Juno and Minerva. His sacred tree was the oak.

The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus, and in Latin literature and Roman art, the myths and iconography of Zeus are adapted under the name Iuppiter. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Jupiter was the brother of Neptune and Pluto. Each presided over one of the three realms of the universe: sky, the waters, and the underworld.

The Italic Diespiter was also a sky god who manifested himself in the daylight, usually but not always identified with Jupiter. Tinia (also Tin, Tinh, Tins or Tina), the god of the sky and the highest god in Etruscan mythology, equivalent to the Roman Jupiter and the Greek Zeus, is usually regarded as his Etruscan counterpart.

The Etruscans believed in Nine Great Gods, who had the power of hurling thunderbolts; they were called Novensiles by the Romans. Of thunderbolts there were eleven sorts, of which Tinia, as the supreme thunder-god, wielded three.

Tinia was also part of the powerful “trinity” that included Menrva and Uni and had temples in every city of Etruria. Tinia was sometimes represented as seated and with a beard or sometimes standing and beardless.

In terms of symbolism, Tinia has the thunderbolt and the rod of power, and is generally accompanied by the eagle and sometimes has a wreath of ivy round his head, in addition to the other insignia of Jove. He was the husband of Thalna or Uni and the father of Hercle.

Some of Tinia’s defining epithets are detailed on the Piacenza Liver, a bronze model of a liver used for haruspicy. Some of his epithets inscribed there include Tin Cilens, Tin Θuf and Tinś Θne.

Týr (Old Norse: Týr), literally meaning “god”, plural tívar “gods”, is a god associated with law and heroic glory in Norse mythology, portrayed as one-handed. Corresponding names in other Germanic languages are Gothic Teiws, Old English Tīw and Old High German Ziu and Cyo, all from Proto-Germanic *Tīwaz. The Latinised name is Tius or Tio.

Tiwas derives from Proto-Indo-European *deiwós “celestial being, god” (cf. Welsh duw, Latin deus, Lithuanian diẽvas, Sanskrit dēvá, Avestan daēvō “demon”). And *deiwós is based in *dei-, *deyā-, *dīdyā-, meaning ‘to shine’.

Tiw is the Old English form of the Proto-Germanic god *Tîwaz, or Týr in Norse, a god of war and law. *Tîwaz derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *dei-, *deyā-, *dīdyā-, meaning ‘to shine’, whence comes also such words as “deity”.

In the late Icelandic Eddas, Tyr is portrayed, alternately, as the son of Odin (Prose Edda) or of Hymir (Poetic Edda), while the origins of his name and his possible relationship to Tuisto suggest he was once considered the father of the gods and head of the pantheon, since his name is ultimately cognate to that of *Dyeus (cf. Dyaus), the reconstructed chief deity in Indo-European religion.

It is assumed that Tîwaz was overtaken in popularity and in authority by both Odin and Thor at some point during the Migration Age, as Odin shares his role as God of war.

Týr is a god of war and will take mead, meat and blood for sacrifice. If a warrior carved the rune Tîwaz on his weapon he would be dedicating it to Týr and strengthen the outcome of a battle to be in his favor. After a warrior has dedicated his weapon to Týr he should not lose it or break it.

In the Elder Futhark, the oldest runic alphabet, the T-rune, named *Tiwaz after Tyr’s name in the Proto-Germanic language that was spoken at the time, is in the shape of an arrow pointed upward toward the heavens, which is clearly emblematic of the god’s associations with both war and the diurnal sky.

The Romans glossed *Tiwaz as “Mars” due to his military role, and a third century votive stone erected by a Germanic warrior in the Roman army features an inscription dedicated to a “Mars of the Þing” (the Germanic judicial/legislative assembly); surely this is addressed to Tyr.

Also through his association with Mars, Tyr lent his name to the modern English “Tuesday,” from Old English “day of Tiw” (Tiwesdæg), which was in turn based on the Latin Dies Martis. Tiw was equated with Mars in the interpretatio germanica. Tuesday is in fact “Tīw’s Day” (also in Alemannic Zischtig from zîes tag), translating dies Martis.

The earliest attestation for Týr’s continental counterpart occurs in Gothic tyz “the t-rune” in the 9th-century Codex Vindobonensis 795. The name is later attested in Old High German as Cyo in the A Wessobrunn prayer ms. of 814. The Negau helmet inscription (2nd century b.c.) may actually record the earliest form, teiva, but this interpretation is tentative.

Týr in origin was a generic noun meaning “god”, e.g. Hangatyr, literally, the “god of the hanged”, as one of Odin’s names, which was probably inherited from Tyr in his role as god of justice. The name continues on as Norwegian Tyr, Swedish Tyr, Danish Tyr, while it remains Týr in Modern Icelandic and Faroese.

The Lokasenna also mentions that Tyr lost one of his hands to the wolf Fenris. Indeed, Tyr’s one-handed-ness seems to be one of his defining attributes. The only full explanation of this handicap comes from the Prose Edda, which recounts how, when the gods endeavored to bind Fenrir for their own safety, the wolf refused to allow the suspiciously innocent-looking cord to be put around him unless one of the deities put his or her hand in his mouth as a pledge of good faith.

Only Tyr was brave and honorable enough to comply with the beast’s request, and, when Fenrir found himself unable to break free of his fetters, he accordingly helped himself to the god’s hand. The tale of the loss of his hand suggests that Tyr was appealed to not only in matters of war but also in matters involving law, justice, honor, oaths, and upholding traditional sources of authority.

Tacitus named the German Mars (believed to be Tyr) as the primary deity, along with the German Mercury (believed to be Odin), Hercules (believed to be Thor) and “Isis”. In Roman historian Tacitus’s first century CE book Germania, Tacitus describes the veneration of what he deems as an “Isis” of the Suebi.

In the text however, Hercules is the one to be mentioned the most often. Depending on translation, “Mercury” is stated to be the chiefly worshipped god but other translation does not provide any sort of hierchy among the gods. Tacitus states that “Mars” and “Hercules” receive animal sacrifices while “Mercury” receives human sacrifices.

In the Old English Rune Poem, the rune that is otherwise named for Tiw in the other rune poems (Abecedarium Nordmanicum, Old Norwegian Rune Rhyme, Old Icelandic Rune Poem), is called tir, meaning “glory”. This rune was inscribed on more Anglo-Saxon cremation urns than any other symbol.

There is sketchy evidence of a consort, in German named Zisa: Tacitus mentions one Germanic tribe who worshipped “Isis”, and Jacob Grimm pointed to Cisa/Zisa, the patroness of Augsburg, in this connection. The name Zisa could be derived from Ziu etymologically.

The Excerptum ex Gallica Historia of Ursberg (ca. 1135) records a dea Ciza as the patron goddess of Augsburg. According to this account, Cisaria was founded by Swabian tribes as a defence against Roman incursions. This Zisa would be the female consort of Ziu, as Dione was of Zeus.

Zisa is an etymological double of Tyr or Ziu according to 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm who suggests that Zisa may be the same figure as Tyr’s unnamed wife, mentioned by Loki in the 13th century Poetic Edda poem Lokasenna.

Grimm proposes a connection between Zisa and to the “Isis” of the Suebi attested by Tacitus in his 1st century CE work Germania based on the similarity of their names, if not their function.

Due to Tacitus’s usage of interpretatio romana elsewhere in the text, his admitted uncertainty, and his reasoning for referring to the veneration of an Egyptian goddess by the Suebi – a group of Germanic peoples – scholars have generally held that Tacitus’s identification is incorrect, and have debated what goddess Tacitus refers to.

The identity of “Isis” has been a matter of debate. In his translation of Germania, scholar J. B. Rives comments that while, in Tacitus’s time, the cult of Isis was widespread and is well attested in provinces on the border of Germania, Tacitus’s identification is problematic because the cult of Isis seems to have spread with Greco-Roman culture.

Rives comments that “most scholars believe that Tacitus has misidentified a native Germanic ritual that bore some resemblance to a well-known Isiac ritual that involved a ship […]”.

According to Tacitus’s Germania (98 CE), Tuisto is the divine ancestor of the Germanic peoples. The figure remains the subject of some scholarly discussion, largely focused upon etymological connections and comparisons to figures in later (particularly Norse) Germanic mythology. In the larger Indo-European pantheon, Tuisto is equated to the Vedic Tvastar.

The Germania manuscript corpus contains two primary variant readings of the name. The most frequently occurring, Tuisto, is commonly connected to the Proto-Germanic root tvai (“two”) and its derivative tvis (“twice”; “doubled”).

Allusions to intersex is entirely conjectural, as the tvia/tvis roots are also the roots of any number of other concepts/words in the Germanic languages. Take for instance the Germanic “twist”, which, in all but the English has the primary meaning of “dispute/conflict”.

The second variant of the name, occurring originally in manuscript E, is Tuisco (sometimes rendered Tuiscon). One proposed etymology for this variant reconstructs a Proto-Germanic tiwisko, and connects this with Proto-Germanic Tiwaz, yielded the meaning “son of Tiu”. This interpretation implies that Tuisco is the son of the sky god (Proto-Indo-European Dyeus) and the earth-goddess.

Connections have been proposed between the 1st century figure of Tuisto and the hermaphroditic primeval being Ymir in later Norse mythology, attested in 13th century sources, based upon etymological and functional similarity. Meyer (1907) sees the connection as so strong, that he considers the two to be identical.

Lindow (2001), while mindful of the possible semantic connection between Tuisto and Ymir, notes an essential functional difference: while Ymir is portrayed as an “essentially … negative figure” – Tuisto is described as being “celebrated” (celebrant) by the early Germanic peoples in song, with Tacitus reporting nothing negative about Tuisto.

Jacob (2005) attempts to establish a genealogical relationship between Tuisto and Ymir based on etymology and a comparison with (post-) Vedic Indian mythology: as Tvastr, through his daughter Saranyū and her husband Vivaswān, is said to have been the grandfather of the twins Yama and Yami, so Jacob argues that the Germanic Tuisto (assuming a connection with Tvastr) must originally have been the grandfather of Ymir (cognate to Yama). Incidentally, Indian mythology also places Manu (cognate to Germanic Mannus), the Vedic progenitor of mankind, as a son of Vivaswān, thus making him the brother of Yama/Ymir.

Tacitus relates that “ancient songs” (Latin carminibus antiquis) of the Germanic peoples celebrated Tuisto as “a god, born of the earth” (deum terra editum'; see Autochthon (ancient Greece). These songs further attributed to him a son, Mannus, who in turn had three sons, the offspring of whom were referred to as Ingaevones, Herminones and Istaevones, living near the Ocean (proximi Oceano), in the interior (medii), and the remaining parts (ceteri) of the geographical region of Germania, respectively.

Tacitus’s report falls squarely within the ethnographic tradition of the classical world, which often fused anthropogony, ethnogony, and theogony together into a synthetic whole. The succession of father-son-three sons parallels occurs in both Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European areas. The essential characteristics of the myth have been theorized as ultimately originating in Proto-Indo-European society around 2,000 BCE.

According to Rives (1999), the fact that the ancient Germanic peoples claimed descent from an earth-born god was used by Tacitus to support his contention that they were an indigenous population: the Latin word indigena was often used in the same sense as the Greek autochthonos, meaning literally ‘[born from] the earth itself’ (from chthōn “earth”).

Lindauer (1975) notes that, although this claim is to be judged as one made out of simple ignorance of the facts on the part of Tacitus, he was not entirely wrong, as he made the judgement based on a comparison with the relatively turbulent Mediterranean region of his day.

The sequence in which one god has a son, who has three famous sons, has a resemblance to how Búri has a son Borr who has three sons: Odin, Vili and Vé. The same tradition occurs with the Slavs and their expansion, in the legend of Lech, Čech and Rus.

“Taevaisa” (Taevas = sky, isa = father) is the word by which adherents in Estonia of the Maausk (faith of the land) and the Taara native beliefs refer to God. Although both branches of the original Estonian religion – which are largely just different ways of approaching what is in essence the same thing, to the extent that it remains extant – are pantheistic, heaven has a definite and important place in the ancient pre-Christian Estonian belief system.

All things are sacred for those of the faith of the land, but the idea of a sky father – among other “sacrednesses” – is something all Estonians are well aware of. In newer history, after the arrival of Christianity, the ideas of a sky father and “a father who art in heaven” have become somewhat conflated. One way or another, the phrase “taevaisa” remains in common use in Estonia.

A tiara (from Latin: tiara, from Ancient Greek: τιάρα) is a form of crown. There are two possible types of crown that this word can refer to. Traditionally, the word “tiara” refers to a high crown, often with the shape of a cylinder narrowed at its top, made of fabric or leather, and richly ornamented. It was used by the kings and emperors of some ancient peoples in Anatolia and Mesopotamia, notably the Hittites.

The Assyrians and the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization used to include a pair of bull horns as a decoration and symbol of authority and a circle of short feathers surrounding the tiara’s top. The Iranian tiara (Tarok) was more similar to a truncated cone, without the horns and feathers but more jewels, and a conic-shaped tip at its top.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Papal tiara is a high cap surrounded by three crowns and bearing a globe surmounted by a cross worn by the Pope during certain ceremonies, being the symbol of his authority. Since Pope Paul VI set aside his tiara after the Second Vatican Council, the Papal Tiara has not been worn. Pope Benedict XVI even removed the tiara from his coat of arms, replacing it with a mitre (but with some symbolic reference to the symbolism of the tiara, still in use in the Holy See’s coat of arms).

A diadem is type of crown, specifically an ornamental headband worn by Eastern monarchs and others as a badge of royalty. The word derives from the Greek διάδημα diádēma, “band” or “fillet”, from διαδέω diadéō, “I bind round”, or “I fasten”.

The term originally referred to the embroidered white silk ribbon, ending in a knot and two fringed strips often draped over the shoulders that surrounded the head of the king to denote his authority. Such ribbons were also used to crown victorious athletes in important sports games in antiquity.

It was later applied to a metal crown, generally in a circular or “fillet” shape. For example, the crown worn by the kings of Anglo-Saxon England was a diadem, as was that of a baron later (in some countries surmounted by three globes).

The ancient Celts were believed to have used a thin, semioval gold plate called a mind (Old Irish) as a diadem. Some of the earliest examples of these types of crowns can be found in ancient Egypt, from the simple fabric type to the more elaborate metallic type, and in the Aegean world.

A diadem is also a jewelled ornament in the shape of a half crown, worn by women and placed over the forehead (in this sense, also called tiara). In some societies, it may be a wreath worn around the head. The ancient Persians wore a high and erect royal tiara encircled with a diadem. Hera, queen of the Greek gods, wore a golden crown called the diadem.

By extension, “diadem” can be used generally for an emblem of regal power or dignity. The head regalia worn by Roman Emperors, from the time of Diocletian onwards, is described as a diadem in the original sources. It was this object that the Foederatus general Odoacer returned to Emperor Zeno (the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire) after his expulsion of the usurper Romulus Augustus from Rome in 476 CE.

A diva is a celebrated female singer; a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and by extension in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of prima donna.

The word entered the English language in the late 19th century. It is derived from the Italian noun diva, a female deity. The plural of the word in English is “divas”; in Italian, dive. The basic sense of the term is goddess, the feminine of the Latin word divus (Italian divo), someone deified after death, or Latin deus, a god.

The male form divo exists in Italian and is usually reserved for the most prominent leading tenors, like Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli. The Italian term divismo describes the star-making system in the film industry.

In contemporary Italian, diva and divo simply denote much-admired celebrities, especially film actresses and actors, and can be translated as “(film) star”. The Italian actress Lyda Borelli is considered the first cinematic diva, following her breakthrough role in Love Everlasting (1913).

The Devil (from Greek: diábolos = slanderer or accuser) is believed in many religions, myths and cultures to be a supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly, ranging from being an effective opposite force to the creator god, locked in an eons long struggle for human souls on what may seem even terms (to the point of dualistic ditheism/bitheism), to being a comical figure of fun or an abstract aspect of the individual human condition.

In mainstream Judaism there is no concept of a devil like in mainstream Christianity or Islam. Texts make no direct link between the serpent that tempts Eve in the Garden of Eden from Genesis and references to a Satan in the first book of Chronicles and in Job.

In Hebrew, the biblical word ha-satan means “the adversary” or the obstacle, or even “the prosecutor” (recognizing that God is viewed as the ultimate Judge). As much as the Devil exists in any form of Judaism, his role is as an adversary and an accuser which is assigned rather than assumed. For the Hasidim of the eighteenth century, ha-satan was Baal Davar.

In mainstream Christianity the Devil is known as Satan and sometimes as Lucifer, although it has been noted that the reference in Isaiah 14:12 to Lucifer, or the Son of the Morning, is a reference to the Babylonian king.

Some modern Christians consider the Devil to be an angel who, along with one-third of the angelic host (the demons) rebelled against God and has consequently been condemned to the Lake of Fire. He is described as hating all humanity (or more accurately creation), opposing God, spreading lies and wreaking havoc on the souls of mankind. Other Christians consider the devil in the Bible to refer figuratively to human sin and temptation and to any human system in opposition to God.

Satan is often identified as the serpent who convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; thus, Satan has often been depicted as a serpent. Though this identification is not present in the Adam and Eve narrative, this interpretation goes back at least as far as the time of the writing of the book of Revelation, which specifically identifies Satan as being the serpent (Rev. 20:2).

In the Bible, the devil is identified with “the dragon” and “the old serpent” in the Book of Revelation 12:9, 20:2 have also been identified with Satan, as have “the prince of this world” in the Book of John 12:31, 14:30; “the prince of the power of the air” also called Meririm, and “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” in the Book of Ephesians 2:2; and “the god of this world” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. He is also identified as the dragon in the Book of Revelation (e.g.), and the tempter of the Gospels (e.g.).

Beelzebub is originally the name of a Philistine god (more specifically a certain type of Baal, from Ba‘al Zebûb, lit. “Lord of Flies”) but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for Satan. A corrupted version, “Belzeboub”, appears in The Divine Comedy.

In other, non-mainstream, Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word “satan” in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any ‘adversary’ and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.

While mainstream Judaism contains no overt concept of a devil, Christianity and Islam have variously regarded the Devil as a rebellious fallen angel or jinni that tempts humans to sin, if not committing evil deeds himself. In these religions – particularly during periods of division or external threat – the Devil has assumed more of a dualistic status commonly associated with heretics, infidels, and other unbelievers. As such, the Devil is seen as an allegory that represents a crisis of faith, individualism, free will, wisdom and enlightenment.

In mainstream Islam and Christianity, God and the Devil are usually portrayed as fighting over the souls of humans. The Devil commands a force of evil spirits, commonly known as demons. The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) describes the Adversary (ha-satan) as an angel who instigates tests upon humankind.

Many other religions have a trickster or tempter figure that is similar to the Devil. Modern conceptions of the Devil include the concept that it symbolizes humans’ own lower nature or sinfulness.

The Modern English word devil descends from the Middle English devel, from Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin diabolus. This in turn was borrowed from Ancient Greek diábolos, “slanderer”, from diabállein “to slander”: diá- “across, through” + bállein “to hurl”. In the New Testament, Satan occurs more than 30 times in passages alongside diábolos, referring to the same person or thing as Satan.

A demon, daemon (from Koine Greek daimonion), or fiend is a supernatural, often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore. The original Greek word daimon does not carry the negative connotation initially understood by implementation of the Koine daimonion, and later ascribed to any cognate words sharing the root.

In Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an unclean spirit, a fallen angel, or a spirit of unknown type which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism.

In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.

The Ancient Greek word δαίμων daimōn denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius or numen. Daimōn most likely came from the Greek verb daiesthai (to divide, distribute).

The Greek conception of a daimōns notably appears in the works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. To distinguish the classical Greek concept from its later Christian interpretation, the former is anglicized as either daemon or daimon rather than demon.

The Greek terms do not have any connotations of evil or malevolence. In fact, εὐδαιμονία eudaimonia, (literally good-spiritedness) means happiness. By the early Roman Empire, cult statues were seen, by pagans and their Christian neighbors alike, as inhabited by the numinous presence of the gods:

“Like pagans, Christians still sensed and saw the gods and their power, and as something, they had to assume, lay behind it, by an easy traditional shift of opinion they turned these pagan daimones into malevolent ‘demons’, the troupe of Satan… Far into the Byzantine period Christians eyed their cities’ old pagan statuary as a seat of the demons’ presence. It was no longer beautiful, it was infested.”

The term had first acquired its negative connotations in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which drew on the mythology of ancient Semitic religions. This was then inherited by the Koine text of the New Testament.

The Western medieval and neo-medieval conception of a demon derives seamlessly from the ambient popular culture of Late (Roman) Antiquity. The Hellenistic “daemon” eventually came to include many Semitic and Near Eastern gods as evaluated by Christianity.

The supposed existence of demons remains an important concept in many modern religions and occultist traditions. Demons are still feared largely due to their alleged power to possess living creatures. In the contemporary Western occultist tradition (perhaps epitomized by the work of Aleister Crowley), a demon (such as Choronzon, the Demon of the Abyss) is a useful metaphor for certain inner psychological processes (inner demons), though some may also regard it as an objectively real phenomenon.

Some scholars believe that large portions of the demonology of Judaism, a key influence on Christianity and Islam, originated from a later form of Zoroastrianism, and were transferred to Judaism during the Persian era.

Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt remarked that “among the activities attributed by myths all over the world to demons, the harmful predominate, so that in popular belief bad demons are clearly older than good ones.”Sigmund Freud developed this idea and claimed that the concept of demons was derived from the important relation of the living to the dead: “The fact that demons are always regarded as the spirits of those who have died recently shows better than anything the influence of mourning on the origin of the belief in demons.”

1. Scott Peck, an American psychiatrist, wrote two books on the subject, People of the Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil and Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption. Peck describes in some detail several cases involving his patients. In People of the Lie he provides identifying characteristics of an evil person, whom he classified as having a character disorder.

In Glimpses of the Devil Peck goes into significant detail describing how he became interested in exorcism in order to debunk the myth of possession by evil spirits – only to be convinced otherwise after encountering two cases which did not fit into any category known to psychology or psychiatry. Peck came to the conclusion that possession was a rare phenomenon related to evil, and that possessed people are not actually evil; rather, they are doing battle with the forces of evil.

Although Peck’s earlier work was met with widespread popular acceptance, his work on the topics of evil and possession has generated significant debate and derision. Much was made of his association with (and admiration for) the controversial Malachi Martin, a Roman Catholic priest and a former Jesuit, despite the fact that Peck consistently called Martin a liar and manipulator.

Richard Woods, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, has claimed that Dr. Peck misdiagnosed patients based upon a lack of knowledge regarding dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), and had apparently transgressed the boundaries of professional ethics by attempting to persuade his patients into accepting Christianity. Father Woods admitted that he has never witnessed a genuine case of demonic possession in all his years.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “In Chaldean mythology the seven evil deities were known as shedu, storm-demons, represented in ox-like form.” They were represented as winged bulls, derived from the colossal bulls used as protective jinn of royal palaces.

From Chaldea, the term shedu traveled to the Israelites. The writers of the Tanach applied the word as a dialogism to Canaanite deities.

There are indications that demons in popular Hebrew mythology were believed to come from the nether world. Various diseases and ailments were ascribed to them, particularly those affecting the brain and those of internal nature. Examples include the catalepsy, headache, epilepsy and nightmares. There also existed a demon of blindness, “Shabriri” (lit. “dazzling glare”) who rested on uncovered water at night and blinded those who drank from it.

Demons supposedly entered the body and caused the disease while overwhelming or “seizing” the victim. To cure such diseases, it was necessary to draw out the evil demons by certain incantations and talismanic performances, which the Essenes excelled at.

Josephus, who spoke of demons as “spirits of the wicked which enter into men that are alive and kill them”, but which could be driven out by a certain root, witnessed such a performance in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and ascribed its origin to King Solomon.

In mythology, there were few defences against Babylonian demons. The mythical mace Sharur had the power to slay demons such as Asag, a legendary gallu or edimmu of hideous strength.

Pre-Islamic mythology did not differentiate between gods and demons. Jinn were considered divinities of inferior rank and had many human abilities, such as eating, drinking and procreating. While most jinn were considered peaceful and well-disposed towards humans, there also existed evil jinn who contrived to injure people.

Jinn, jann or djinn (singular: jinnī, djinni, or genie; Arabic: al-jinn, singular al-jinnī) are supernatural creatures in Islamic mythology as well as pre-Islamic Arabian mythology.

They are mentioned frequently in the Quran (the 72nd sura is titled Sūrat al-Jinn) and other Islamic texts and inhabit an unseen world called Djinnestan, another universe beyond the known universe.

The Quran says that the jinn are made of a smokeless and “scorching fire”, but are also physical in nature, being able to interact in a tactile manner with people and objects and likewise be acted upon. The jinn, humans, and angels make up the three known sapient creations of God. Like human beings, the jinn can be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent and hence have free will like humans and unlike angels.

The shaytan jinn are the analogue of demons in Christian tradition, but the jinn are not angels and the Quran draws a clear distinction between the two creations. The Quran states in surat Al-Kahf (The Cave), Ayah 50, that Iblis (Azazel) is one of the jinn.

Jinn is a noun of the collective number in the Persian language literally meaning “hidden from sight”, and it derives from the Arabic root j-n-n (pronounced: jann/ junn جَنّ / جُنّ) meaning “to hide” or “be hidden”. Other words derived from this root are majnūn ‘mad’ (literally, ‘one whose intellect is hidden’), junūn ‘madness’, and janīn ’embryo, fetus’ (‘hidden inside the womb’).

The word genie in English is derived from Latin genius, meaning a sort of tutelary or guardian spirit thought to be assigned to each person at birth. English borrowed the French descendant of this word, génie; its earliest written attestation in English, in 1655, is a plural spelled “genyes”. The French translators of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights used génie as a translation of jinnī because it was similar to the Arabic word in sound and in meaning. This use was also adopted in English and has since become dominant.

In Arabic, the word jinn is in the collective number, translated in English as plural (e.g., “several genies”); jinnī is in the singulative number, used to refer to one individual, which is translated by the singular in English (e.g., “one genie”). Therefore, the word jinn in English writing is treated as a plural.

Inscriptions found in Northwestern Arabia seem to indicate the worship of jinn, or at least their tributary status, hundreds of years before Islam. For instance, an inscription from Beth Fasi’el near Palmyra pays tribute to the “jinnaye”, the “good and rewarding gods”.

In classical Roman religion a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera (libation bowl) or snake.

Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were dedicated to a particular genius loci. The Roman imperial cults of the Emperor and the imperial house developed in part in connections with the sacrifices made by neighborhood associations (vici) to the local genius.

These 265 local districts had their cult organised around the Lares Compitales (guardian spirits or lares of the crossroads), which the emperor Augustus transformed into Lares Augusti along with the Genius Augusti. The Emperor’s genius is then regarded as the genius loci of the Roman Empire as a whole.

Roman examples of these Genii can be found, for example, at the church of St. Giles, Tockenham, Wiltshire where the genius loci is depicted as a relief in the wall of a Norman church built of Roman material. This shows “a youthful and curly-haired Roman Genius worked in high relief, holding a cornucopia in his left hand and a patera in his right’, which previously has been “erroneously identified as Asclepius”.

The numinous spirits of places in Asia are still honored today in city pillar shrines, outdoor spirit houses and indoor household and business shrines. In contemporary usage, genius loci usually refers to a location’s distinctive atmosphere, or a “spirit of place”, rather than necessarily a guardian spirit. An example of contemporary usage might be along the lines of “Light reveals the genius loci of a place.”

The Zeitgeist (spirit of the age or spirit of the time) is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time. For example, the Zeitgeist of modernism typified and influenced architecture, art, and fashion during much of the 20th century.

The German word Zeitgeist is often attributed to the philosopher Georg Hegel, but he never actually used the word. In his works such as Lectures on the Philosophy of History, he uses the phrase der Geist seiner Zeit (the spirit of his time)—for example, “no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit.”

Other philosophers who were associated with such ideas include Herder and Spencer and Voltaire. The concept contrasts with the Great Man theory popularized by Thomas Carlyle, which sees history as the result of the actions of heroes and geniuses.

Hegel believed that art reflected, by its very nature, the culture of the time in which it is created. Culture and art are inextricable because an individual artist is a product of his or her time and therefore brings that culture to any given work of art. Furthermore, he believed that in the modern world it was impossible to produce classical art, which he believed represented a “free and ethical culture”, which depended more on the philosophy of art and theory of art, rather than a reflection of the social construct, or Zeitgeist in which a given artist lives.

In the analysis of the arts and culture, the concept of a “spirit of the age” or zeitgeist may be problematic as a tool for analysis of periods which are socially or culturally fragmented and diverse.

In Roman religion, the genius (plural genii) is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing. Much like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died. For women it was the Juno spirit that would accompany each of them. The Greeks called their genii, daemons, and believed in them long before the Romans.

The rational powers and abilities of every human being were attributed to their soul, which was a genius. Each individual place had a genius (genius loci) and so did powerful objects, such as volcanoes. The concept extended to some specifics: the genius of the theatre, of vineyards, and of festivals, which made performances successful, grapes grow, and celebrations succeed, respectively. It was extremely important in the Roman mind to propitiate the appropriate genii for the major undertakings and events of their lives.

Etymologically genius (“household guardian spirit”) has the same derivation as nature from gēns (“tribe”, “people”) from the Indo-European root *gen-, “produce.” It is the indwelling nature of an object or class of objects or events that act with a perceived or hypothesized unity.

Philosophically the Romans did not find the paradox of the one being many confusing; like all other prodigies they attributed it to the inexplicable mystery of divinity. Multiple events could therefore be attributed to the same and different divinities and a person could be the same as and different from his genius. They were not distinct, as the later guardian angels, and yet the Genius Augusti was not exactly the same as Augustus either.

As a natural outcome of these beliefs, the pleasantness of a place, the strength of an oath, an ability of a person, were regarded as intrinsic to the object, and yet were all attributable to genius; hence all of the modern meanings of the word. This point of view is not attributable to any one civilization; its roots are lost in prehistory. The Etruscans had such beliefs at the beginning of history, but then so did the Greeks, the native Italics and many other peoples in the near and middle east.

“Dæmon” is the Latinized versions of the Greek (“godlike power, fate, god”). It is a word used to refer to the daemons of ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy.

The word daemon is the Latin version of the first word (the originating word) daimōn, originating in the Greek language. Satanists have used the word demon to define a knowledge that has been banned by the Church.

Daemons are benevolent or benign nature spirits, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature or the deities themselves.

Walter Burkert suggests that unlike the Christian use of demon in a strictly malignant sense, “[a] general belief in spirits is not expressed by the term daimon until the 5th century when a doctor asserts that neurotic women and girls can be driven to suicide by imaginary apparitions, ‘evil daimones’.

How far this is an expression of widespread popular superstition is not easy to judge… On the basis of Hesiod’s myth, however, what did gain currency was for great and powerful figures to be honoured after death as a daimon…”  Daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Burkert, but rather a non-personified “peculiar mode” of their activity.

In Hesiod’s Theogony, Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or a divine spirit, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres, not daimones. From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus, to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; “good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts”.

The daimon of venerated heroes, were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to restlessly wander, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects.

Characterizations of the daemon as a dangerous, if not evil, lesser spirit were developed by Plato and his pupil Xenocrates, and later absorbed in Christian patristic writings along with Neo-Platonic elements.

In the Old Testament, evil spirits appear in the book of Judges and in Kings. In the Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, the Greek ángelos (“messenger”) translates the Hebrew word mal’ak, while daimon (or neuter daimonion) carries the meaning of a natural spirit that is less than divine (see supernatural) and translates the Hebrew words for idols, foreign deities, certain beasts, and natural evils. The use of daimōn in the New Testament’s original Greek text, caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo-Christian concept of an evil spirit by the early second century AD.

Homer’s use of the words theoí (“gods”) and daímones, suggests that while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato, in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn (“deity”) is synonymous to daēmōn (“knowing or wise”), however, it is more probably daiō (“to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot”).

The idea of the daimonic typically means quite a few things: from befitting a demon and fiendish, to motivated by a spiritual force or genius and inspired. As a psychological term, it has come to represent an elemental force which contains an irrepressible drive towards individuation. As a literary term, it can also mean the dynamic unrest that exists in us all that forces us into the unknown, leading to self-destruction and/or self-discovery.

The root of the word has a referent from daiomai, which is translated as something like to divide or to lacerate.

Marie-Louise von Franz delineated the term daiomai (see ref.), and indicates that its’ usage is specifically when someone perceived an occurrence which they attributed to the influence of a divine presence, amongst the examples provided by Franz, are from attributing to a daimon the occurrence of a horse becoming or being startled.

According to another source, the term is thought to have originated with the Greeks, by way of Latin—dæmon: “spirit”, derived from Greek—daimon (gen. daimonos): “lesser god, guiding spirit, tutelary deity”, a meaning which is attested to elsewhere.

For the Minoan (3000-1100 BC) and Mycenaean (1500-1100 BC), “daimons” were seen as attendants or servants to the deities, possessing spiritual power. Later, the term “daimon” was used by writers such as Homer (8th century BC), Hesiod, and Plato as a synonym for theos, or god. Some scholars, like van der Leeuw, suggest a distinction between the terms: whereas theos was the personification of a god (e.g. Zeus), daimon referred to something indeterminate, invisible, incorporeal, and unknown.

During the period in which Homer was alive, people believed ailments were both caused and cured by daimons. Heraclitus Of Ephesus, who was born about 540 B.C., wrote: ēthos anthropōi daimōn — Diels fragment 119 (in Agamben & Heller-Roazen 1999) which is translated as, the character (ēthos) of a human (anthropōi) is the daimōn, or sometimes the character of a person is Fate, and the variation An individuals character is their fate (idem “Man’s character is his fate”).

Aeschylus mentions the term Daimon in his play Agemmemnon, written during 458 B.C., and Socrates thought the daimones to be gods or the children of gods. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Empedocles (5th century BC) later employed the term in describing the psyche or soul. Similarly, those such as Plutarch (1st century AD) suggested a view of the daimon as being an amorphous mental phenomenon, an occasion of mortals to come in contact with a great spiritual power. Plutarch wrote De genio Socratis.

The earliest pre-Christian conception of daimons or daimones also considered them ambiguous—not exclusively evil. But while daimons may have initially been seen as potentially good and evil, constructive and destructive, left to each man to relate to—the term eventually came to embody a purely evil connotation, with Xenocrates perhaps being one of the first to popularize this colloquial use.

In psychology, the daimonic refers to a natural human impulse within everyone to affirm, assert, perpetuate, and increase the self to its complete totality. If each Self undergoes a process of individuation, an involuntary and natural development towards individual maturity and harmony with collective human nature, then its driver is the daimonic, the force which seeks to overcome the obstacles to development, whatever the cost—both guide and guardian.

Rollo May writes that the daimonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person… The daimonic can be either creative or destructive, but it is normally both… The daimonic is obviously not an entity but refers to a fundamental, archetypal function of human experience — an existential reality”. The daimonic is seen as an essentially undifferentiated, impersonal, primal force of nature which arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such.

The demands of the daimonic force upon the individual can be unorthodox, frightening, and overwhelming. With its obligation to protect the complete maturation of the individual and the unification of opposing forces within the Self, the inner urge can come in the form of a sudden journey (either intentional or serendipitous), a psychological illness, or simply neurotic and off-center behavior.

Jung writes, “The daimon throws us down, makes us traitors to our ideals and cherished convictions — traitors to the selves we thought we were.” Ultimately, it is the will of man to achieve his humanity, but since parts of his humanity may be deemed unacceptable and disowned its demands is too often resisted. It is no wonder Yeats described it as that “other Will”. Confrontation with the daimonic can be considered similar to “shadow-work”.

The psychologist Rollo May conceives of the daimonic as a primal force of nature which contains both constructive and destructive potentialities, but ultimately seeks to promote totality of the self.

May introduced the daimonic to psychology as a concept designed to rival the terms ‘devil’ and ‘demonic’. He believed the term demonic to be unsatisfactory because of our tendency, rooted in Judeo-Christian mythology, to project power outside of the self and onto devils and demons.

The daimonic is also similar to Jung’s shadow, but is viewed as less differentiated. A pitfall of the Jungian doctrine of the shadow is the temptation to project evil onto this relatively autonomous ‘splinter personality’ and thus unnecessarily fragment the individual and obviate freedom and responsibility. Finally, by comparison to Freud’s death instinct (Thanatos), the daimonic is seen as less one-sided.

While similar to several other psychological terms, noteworthy differences exist. The daimonic is often improperly confused with the term demonic.

Dim may refer to a low level of lighting; lacking in brightness. Global dimming is the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth’s surface. Global dimming is thought to have been caused by an increase in particulates such as sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere due to human action.

It has interfered with the hydrological cycle by reducing evaporation and may have reduced rainfall in some areas. Global dimming also creates a cooling effect that may have partially counteracted the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming. In basic terms, less sunlight is reaching the Earth because of visible air pollution, which is reflecting the light back into space.

In Mesopotamian mythology, Lamashtu (Akkadian La-maš-tu; Sumerian Dimme Dim3-me) was a female demon, monster, malevolent goddess or demigoddess who menaced women during childbirth and, if possible, kidnapped children while they were breastfeeding. She would gnaw on their bones and suck their blood, as well as being charged with a number of other evil deeds. She was a daughter of the Sky God Anu.

Lamashtu is depicted as a mythological hybrid, with a hairy body, a lioness’ head with donkey’s teeth and ears, long fingers and fingernails, and the feet of a bird with sharp talons. She is often shown standing or kneeling on a donkey, nursing a pig and a dog, and holding snakes. She thus bears some functions and resemblance to the Mesopotamian demon Lilith.

Lamashtu’s father was the Sky God Anu (Sumer An). Unlike many other usual demonic figures and depictions in Mesopotamian lore, Lamashtu was said to act in malevolence of her own accord, rather than at the gods’ instructions. Along with this her name was written together with the cuneiform determinative indicating deity. This means she was a goddess or a demigoddess in her own right.

She bore seven names and was described as seven witches in incantations. Her evil deeds included (but were not limited to): slaying children, unborns, and neonates; causing harm to mothers and expectant mothers; eating men and drinking their blood; disturbing sleep; bringing nightmares; killing foliage; infesting rivers and lakes; and being a bringer of disease, sickness, and death.

Pazuzu, a god or demon, was invoked to protect birthing mothers and infants against Lamashtu’s malevolence, usually on amulets and statues. Although Pazuzu was said to be bringer of famine and drought, he was also invoked against evil for protection, and against plague, but he was primarily and popularly invoked against his fierce, malicious rival Lamashtu.

An Akkadian incantation and ritual against Lamashtu is edited in Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments vol. 2 (1988). It is glossed as an “incantation to dispel lasting fever and Lamashtu”. The prescribed ritual involves a Lamashtu figurine. A sacrifice of bread must be placed before the figurine and water must be poured over it. A black dog must be made to carry the figurine. Then it is placed near the head of the sick child for three days, with the heart of a piglet placed in its mouth. The incantation must be recited three times a day, besides further food sacrifices. At dusk on the third day, the figurine is taken outdoors and buried near the wall.

In Babylonian mythology, the seven evil deities were known as shedu, or “storm-demons”. They were represented in winged bull form, derived from the colossal bulls used as protective genii of royal palaces, the name “shed” assumed also the meaning of a propitious genius in Babylonian magic literature.

It was from Chaldea that the name “shedu” came to the Israelites, and so the writers of the Tanach applied the word Shedim to certain Canaanite deities. They also spoke of “the destroyer” (Exodus xii. 23) as a Lord who will “strike down the Egyptians.”

In II Samuel xxiv; 16 and II Chronicles xxi. 15 the pestilence-dealing angel, that is spirit, called “the destroying angel” (compare “the angel of the Lord” in II Kings xix. 35; Isaiah xxxvii. 36).

A lamassu (Cuneiform: AN.KAL; Sumerian: lamma; Akkadian: lamassu; sometimes called a lamassus) is an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted with a bull or lion’s body, eagle’s wings, and human’s head. In some writings, it is portrayed to represent a female deity. A less frequently used name is shedu (Cuneiform: AN.KAL×BAD; Sumerian: alad; Akkadian, šēdu) which refers to the male counterpart of a lamassu. The Lammasu or Lumasi represent the zodiacs, parent-stars, or constellations.

Shedim is the Hebrew word for demons. The word shedim appears only twice (always plural) in the Tanakh, at Psalm 106:37 and Deuteronomy 32:17. It was possibly a loan-word from Akkadian in which the word sedu referred to a protective, benevolent spirit. Both times the term appears in the Tanakh, it deals with child or animal sacrifice to false gods that are called demons. The word may also derive from the “Sedim, Assyrian guard spirits” as referenced according to lore “Azael slept with Naamah and spawned Assyrian guard spirits known as sedim”.

The word demonology is from Greek daimōn, “divinity, divine power, god”; and -logia. Demonology is the systematic study of demons or beliefs about demons. It is the branch of theology relating to supernatural beings who are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings that have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent beings of all kinds.

The original sense of “demon”, from the time of Homer onward, was a benevolent being, but in English the name now holds connotations of malevolence. (In order to keep the distinction, when referring to the word in its original Greek meaning English uses the spelling “Daemon” or “Daimon”.)

Demons, when regarded as spirits, may belong to either of the classes of spirits recognized by primitive animism; that is to say, they may be human, or non-human, separable souls, or discarnate spirits which have never inhabited a body. A sharp distinction is often drawn between these two classes, notably by the Melanesians, several African groups, and others; the Arab jinn, for example, are not reducible to modified human souls; at the same time these classes are frequently conceived as producing identical results, e.g. diseases.

Dīn (also anglicized as Deen) is an Arabic word which is commonly associated with Islam, but it is also used in Arab Christian worship. The term is sometimes translated as “religion”, but as used in the Qur’an, it refers both to the path along which righteous Muslims travel in order to comply with divine law, or Shari’a, and to the divine judgment or recompense to which all humanity must inevitably face without intercessors before God.

Thus, although secular Muslims would say that their practical interpretation of Dīn conforms to “religion” in the restricted sense of something that can be carried out in separation from other areas of life, both mainstream and reformist Muslim writers take the word to mean an all-encompassing way of life carried out under the auspices of God’s divine purpose as expressed in the Qur’an and hadith. As one notably progressive Muslim writer puts it, far from being a discrete aspect of life carried out in the mosque, “Islam is Dīn, a complete way of life”.

How the term Dīn came to be used in Islamic Arabia is uncertain, but its use in modern Persian may derive etymologically from the Zoroastrian concept of Daena, as it is called in the ancient Eastern Iranian Avestan language, which represents “insight” and “revelation”, and from this “conscience” and “religion”. Here, Daena is the Eternal Law, which was revealed to humanity through the Mathra-Spenta (“Holy Words”). Alternatively, the Hebrew term, transliterated as “dīn”, means either “law” or “judgement”.

In the Kabbalah of Judaism, the term can, alongside “Gevurah” (cognate to the Arabic “Jabaarah”), refer to “power”, and to “judgement”. It may be the root of the common Semitic word Madīnah (city), and of Madyan, a geographical place and a people mentioned in the Bible and in the Qur’an. Thus, Dīn does not simply mean “religion” or “faith”, but refers to “Governance”.

In Judaism, the word Dīn appears in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), which occurs 24 times. It often means –to judge, or –execute judgment, and –to vindicate. The intransitive usage of the verb loosely means –to be obedient, submissive. The transitive verb usage denotes requite, compensate, rule, govern, obedience, abasement, recompense, requiter, governor.

Daena is a Zoroastrian concept representing insight and revelation, hence “conscience” or “religion.” Alternately, Daena is considered to be a divinity, counted among the yazatas.

Daena is a feminine noun which translates to “that which is seen or observed”. In Zoroastrianism: An Introduction to an Ancient Faith, Peter Clark suggests that the term might also be tied to the Avestan root “deh” or “di-” to gain understanding.

The Avestan language term – trisyllabic daēnā in Gathic Avestan and bisyllabic dēnā in Younger Avestan – continues into Middle Persian as dēn, which preserves the Avestan meanings.

The concept of Daena is mentioned in the Gathas, a series of seventeen hymns supposedly written by Zoroaster. Daena appears both in the Ahunavaiti Gatha[2] and in the Ushtavaiti Gatha, where it is written that Daena is somehow affiliated with the reward that the faithful will receive in the afterlife. However, references to Daena in the Gathas are brief, leaving much ambiguity on its nature.

Later Avestan writings, such as the Vendidad, describe the concept of Daena further. The Vendidad portrays Daena as something of a psychopomp, guiding good and pure souls over the Chinvat Bridge to the House of Song, Zoroastrian paradise, while the wicked are dragged to the House of Lies, a place of punishment. She is described as being finely dressed, and accompanied by dogs.

Maneckji Dhalla writes in Zoroastrian Theology that on the dawn of the fourth day after death “there appears then to the soul its own daena, or religious conscience in the shape of a damsel of unsurpassed beauty, the fairest of the fair in the world.”

Daena (din in modern Persian) is the eternal Law, whose order was revealed to humanity through the Mathra-Spenta (“Holy Words”). Daena has been used to mean religion, faith, law, even as a translation for the Hindu and Buddhist term Dharma, often interpreted as “duty” or social order, right conduct, or virtue. The metaphor of the ‘path’ of Daena is represented in Zoroastrianism by the muslin undershirt Sudra, the ‘Good/Holy Path’, and the 72-thread Kushti girdle, the “Pathfinder”.

In the Samkhya school of philosophy, tamas (Sanskrit: tamas “darkness”) is one of the three gunas (or qualities), the other two being rajas (passion and activity) and sattva (purity, goodness). Tamas is the template for inertia or resistance to action. It has also been translated from Sanskrit as “indifference”.

In Greek mythology, Tethys, daughter of Uranus and Gaia, was an archaic Titaness and aquatic sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry, but not venerated in cult.

Tethys was both sister and wife of Oceanus. Tethys and Oceanus appear as a pair in Callimachus (Hymn 4.17) and in Apollonius (Argonautica 3.244). In Catullus 88, not even Tethys and Oceanus can wash away Gellius’ stain of incest: “o Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys / nec genitor Nympharum abluit Oceanus.”

1. J. Harrison points out the irony of Catullus’ allusion to the sibling couple in this context. She was mother of the chief rivers of the world known to the Greeks, such as the Nile, the Alpheus, the Maeander, and about three thousand daughters called the Oceanids. Considered as an embodiment of the waters of the world she also may be seen as a counterpart of Thalassa, the embodiment of the sea.

Although these vestiges imply a strong role in earlier times, Tethys plays virtually no part in recorded Greek literary texts, or historical records of cults. Walter Burkert states that “Tethys is in no way an active figure in Greek mythology” but notes her presence in the episode of Iliad XIV that the Ancients called the “Deception of Zeus”, where Hera, to mislead Zeus, says she wants to go to Oceanus, “origin of the gods” and Tethys “the mother”.

Burkert sees in the name a transformation of Akkadian tiamtu or tâmtu, “the sea,” which is recognizable in Tiamat. Alternatively, her name may simply mean “old woman”, derived from Ancient Greek têthe, meaning “grandmother”, and she is often portrayed as being extremely ancient.

In Greek mythology, Thalassa (“sea”) is a primordial sea goddess, daughter of Aether and Hemera. She and sea god Pontus were the parents of the nine Telchines and Halia. According to a myth recounted by Hesiod, she gave birth to Aphrodite when Cronus cut the genitalia of Uranus that subsequently fell into the sea.

Thalassa is a personification of the sea itself; as told in Aesop’s Fables she appears as a woman rising up from the depths of the sea, as well in Roman-era mosaics. In these mosaics she is depicted with crab-claw-horns, wearing seaweed, and holding a ship’s oar. Her counterpart is considered to be Amphitrite who is the wife of Poseidon. Her other counterpart can be considered to be the Greek titan Tethys.

In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (German: Todestrieb) is the drive towards death, self-destruction and the return to the inorganic: “the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state”. It was originally proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where in his first published reference to the term he wrote of the “opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts”.

In this work, Freud used the plural “death drives” (Todestriebe) much more frequently than in the singular. The death drive opposes Eros, the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other creative, life-producing drives. The death drive is sometimes referred to as “Thanatos” in post-Freudian thought, complementing “Eros”, although this term was not used in Freud’s own work, being rather introduced by one of Freud’s followers, Wilhelm Stekel.

The Standard Edition of Freud’s works in English confuses two terms that are different in German, Instinkt (“instinct”) and Trieb (“drive”), often translating both as instinct. “This incorrect equating of instinct and Trieb has created serious misunderstandings”. Freud actually refers to the “death instinct” as a drive, a force that is not essential to the life of an organism (unlike an instinct) and tends to denature it or make it behave in ways that are sometimes counter-intuitive.

The term is almost universally known in scholarly literature on Freud as the “death drive”, and Lacanian psychoanalysts often shorten it to simply “drive” (although Freud posited the existence of other drives as well).

Destrudo is a term introduced by Italian psychoanalyst Edoardo Weiss in 1935 to denote the energy of the death instinct, on the analogy of libido — and thus to cover the energy of the destructive impulse in Freudian psychology.

Destrudo is the opposite of libido — the urge to create, an energy that arises from the Eros (or “life”) drive — and is the urge to destroy arising from Thanatos (“death”), and thus an aspect of what Sigmund Freud termed “the aggressive instincts, whose aim is destruction”.

Weiss related aggression/destrudo to secondary narcissism, something generally only described in terms of the libido turning towards the self.

Whereas Freud himself never named the aggressive and destructive energy of the death drive (as he had done with the life drive, “libido”), the next generation of psychoanalysts vied to find suitable names for it. Paul Federn used the term mortido for the new energy source, and has generally been followed in that by other analytic writers. His disciple and collaborator Weiss, however, chose destrudo; and it was this term that was later taken up by Charles Brenner.

In Mesopotamian Religion (Sumerian, Assyrian, Akkadian and Babylonian), Tiamat is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation, depicted as a woman, she represents both the beauty of the feminine, depicted as the glistening one.

She is a primordial goddess of the ocean, mating with Abzû (the god of fresh water) to produce younger gods. It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is a creator goddess, through a “Sacred marriage” between salt and fresh water, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations. In the second “Chaoskampf” Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.

Some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon. In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of deities; her husband, Apsu, later makes war upon them and is killed. When she, too, wars upon her husband’s murderers, she is then slain by Enki’s son, the storm-god Marduk. The heavens and the earth are formed from her divided body.

Tiamat was later known as Thalattē (as a variant of thalassa, the Greek word for “sea”) in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus’ first volume of universal history. It is thought that the name of Tiamat was dropped in secondary translations of the original religious texts (written in the East Semitic Akkadian language) because some Akkadian copyists of Enûma Elish substituted the ordinary word for “sea” for Tiamat, since the two names had become essentially the same due to association. Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu, following an early form, ti’amtum.

Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. He finds the later form, thalatth, to be related clearly to Greek thalatta or thalassa, “sea”. The Babylonian epic Enuma Elish is named for its incipit: “When above” the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Apsu the freshwater ocean was there, “the first, the begetter”, and Tiamat, the saltwater sea, “she who bore them all”; they were “mixing their waters”. It is thought that female deities are older than male ones in Mesopotamia and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally strong connections to the underworld, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki.

Harriet Crawford finds this “mixing of the waters” to be a natural feature of the middle Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and mingle with the salt waters of the sea. This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means “two seas”, and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation.

Tiamat also has been claimed to be cognate with Northwest Semitic tehom (the deeps, abyss), in the Book of Genesis 1:2. In the Enûma Elish her physical description includes a tail, a thigh, “lower parts” (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. She has insides (possibly “entrails”), a heart, arteries, and blood.

Tiamat is usually described as a sea serpent or dragon, however assyriologist Alexander Heidel disagreed with this identification and argued that “dragon form can not be imputed to Tiamat with certainty”. Other scholars have disregarded Heidel’s argument, Joseph Fontenrose in particular found it “not convincing” and concluded that “there is reason to believe that Tiamat was sometimes, not necessarily always, conceived as a dragoness”.

While the Enûma Elish does not specifically state that Tiamat is a dragon, only that she gave birth to dragons and serpents among a more general list of monsters including scorpion men and merpeople, other sources containing the same myth do refer to her as a dragon.

The depiction of Tiamat as a multi-headed dragon was popularized in the 1970s as a fixture of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game inspired by earlier sources associating Tiamat with later mythological characters, such as Lotan.

In the Ausarian drama we find that Ausar (Greek: Osiris) is chopped into 13 pieces by Set. Auset (Isis) collects all of his pieces save his phallus. Horus, son of Ausar and Auset sets out to avenge the death and dismemberment of his father by confronting Set.

Horus is victorious over Set and Ausar, being brought back from the dead becomes lord of the underworld. It is this drama that gives us the cosmic conflict between good and evil, evil being embodied by Set. This is not to say that Set was always seen as an evil character in Ancient Egyptian theology. There are many times in Ancient Egyptian history where conflicts between different “houses” lead to the depreciation of one god relative to another.

As in most polytheistic faiths, the characters involved differentiate themselves from the Western tradition of a devil in that all the gods are closely related. In this case, numerous historic texts suggest that Set is the Uncle or Brother of Horus and in the “defeat” of Set, we see another separation from the norm in the devouring/assimilation of Set into Horus with the result of Horus having depictions of both the falcon head and the (unknown animal) head of Set. This (like Buddhism) represents a dissolution of dichotomy.

In the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrian Avesta, believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, the poet does not mention a manifest adversary. Ahura Mazda’s Creation is “truth”, asha. The “lie” (druj) is manifest only as decay or chaos, not an entity.

Later, in Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism), Ahura Mazda and the principle of evil, Angra Mainyu, are the “twin” offspring of Zurvan, ‘Time’. No trace of Zurvanism exists after the 10th century.

Today, the Parsis of India largely accept the 19th century interpretation that Angra Mainyu is the ‘Destructive Emanation’ of Ahura Mazda. Instead of struggling against Mazda himself, Angra Mainyu battles Spenta Mainyu, Mazda’s ‘Creative Emanation.’

One of the most important goddesses of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion is the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman. Her name is reconstructed as Hausōs (PIE *h₂ewsṓs- or *h₂ausōs-, an s-stem), besides numerous epithets.

Derivatives of *h₂ewsṓs in the historical mythologies of Indo-European peoples include Indian Uṣas, Greek Ēōs, Latin Aurōra, and Baltic Aušra (“dawn”, c.f. Lithuanian Aušrinė). Germanic *Austrōn- is from an extended stem *h₂ews-tro-.

The name *h₂ewsṓs is derived from a root *h₂wes / *au̯es “to shine”, thus translating to “the shining one”. Both the English word east and the Latin auster “south” are from a root cognate adjective *aws-t(e)ro-. Also cognate is aurum “gold”, from *awso-.

The name for “spring season”, *wes-r- is also from the same root. The dawn goddess was also the goddess of spring, involved in the mythology of the Indo-European new year, where the dawn goddess is liberated from imprisonment by a god (reflected in the Rigveda as Indra, in Greek mythology as Dionysus and Cronus).

Besides the name most amenable to reconstruction, *h₂ewsṓs, a number of epithets of the dawn goddess may be reconstructed with some certainty. Among these is *wenos- (also an s-stem), whence Sanskrit vanas “loveliness; desire”, used of Uṣas in the Rigveda, and the Latin name Venus and the Norse Vanir. The name indicates that the goddess was imagined as a beautiful nubile woman, who also had aspects of a love goddess.

As a consequence, the love goddess aspect was separated from the personification of dawn in a number of traditions, including Roman Venus vs. Aurora, and Greek Aphrodite vs. Eos. The name of Aphrodite Άφροδίτη may still preserve her role as a dawn goddess, etymologized as “she who shines from the foam [ocean]” (from aphros “foam” and deato “to shine”).

J.P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams (1997) have also proposed an etymology based on the connection with the Indo-European dawn goddess, from *abhor- “very” and *dhei “to shine”. Other epithets include Ἠριγόνη Erigone “early-born” in Greek.

The Italic goddess Mater Matuta “Mother Morning” has been connected to Aurora by Roman authors (Lucretius, Priscianus). Her festival, the Matralia, fell on 11 June, beginning at dawn.

The abduction and imprisonment of the dawn goddess, and her liberation by a heroic god slaying the dragon who imprisons her, is a central myth of Indo-European religion, reflected in numerous traditions. Most notably, it is the central myth of the Rigveda, a collection of hymns surrounding the Soma rituals dedicated to Indra in the New Year celebrations of the early Indo-Aryans.

The worship of serpent deities is present in several old cultures, particularly in religion and mythology, where snakes were seen as entities of strength and renewal. The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols.

The word is derived from Latin serpens, a crawling animal or snake. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind and represent dual expression of good and evil.

Historically, serpents and snakes represent fertility or a creative life force. As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing. The ouroboros is a symbol of eternity and continual renewal of life.

In some Abrahamic traditions, the serpent represents sexual desire. According to some interpretations of the Midrash, the serpent represents sexual passion. In Hinduism, Kundalini is a coiled serpent, the residual power of pure desire.

In the Gospel of John 3:14–15, Jesus makes direct comparison between the raising up of the Son of Man and the act of Moses in raising up the serpent as a sign, using it as a symbol associated with salvation: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”.

In other cultures snakes symbolized the umbilical cord, joining all humans to Mother Earth. The Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars—sometimes twining around her sacred staff, as in ancient Crete—and they were worshiped as guardians of her mysteries of birth and regeneration.

In many myths the chthonic serpent (sometimes a pair) lives in or is coiled around a Tree of Life situated in a divine garden. In the Genesis story of the Torah and Biblical Old Testament, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is situated in the Garden of Eden together with the tree of life and the Serpent. In Greek mythology Ladon coiled around the tree in the garden of the Hesperides protecting the entheogenic golden apples.

Similarly Níðhöggr (Nidhogg Nagar) the dragon of Norse mythology eats from the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Under yet another Tree (the Bodhi tree of Enlightenment), the Buddha sat in ecstatic meditation. When a storm arose, the mighty serpent king Mucalinda rose up from his place beneath the earth and enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, not to break his ecstatic state.

Teshub (also written Teshup or Tešup; cuneiform IM) was the Hurrian god of sky and storm. Taru is the Hattian form derived from Teshub. His Hittite and Luwian name was Tarhun (with variant stem forms Tarhunt, Tarhuwant, Tarhunta), although this name is from the Hittite root *tarh- “to defeat, conquer”.

Teshub is depicted holding a triple thunderbolt and a weapon, usually an axe (often double-headed) or mace. The sacred bull common throughout Anatolia was his signature animal, represented by his horned crown or by his steeds Seri and Hurri, who drew his chariot or carried him on their backs.

The Hurrian myth of Teshub’s origin—he was conceived when the god Kumarbi bit off and swallowed his father Anu’s genitals, similarly to the Greek story of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus, which is recounted in Hesiod’s Theogony. Teshub’s brothers are Aranzah (personification of the river Tigris), Ullikummi (stone giant) and Tashmishu.

In the Hurrian schema, Teshub was paired with Hebat the mother goddess; in the Hittite, with the sun goddess Arinniti of Arinna—a cultus of great antiquity which has similarities with the venerated bulls and mothers at Çatalhöyük in the Neolithic era. His son was called Sarruma, the mountain god.

According to Hittite myths, one of Teshub’s greatest acts was the slaying of the dragon Illuyanka. Myths also exist of his conflict with the sea creature (possibly a snake or serpent) Hedammu (CTH 348).

In Hittite mythology, Illuyanka was a serpentine dragon slain by Tarhunt (IM), the Hittite incarnation of the Hurrian god of sky and storm. It is known from Hittite cuneiform tablets found at Çorum-Boğazköy, the former Hittite capital Hattusa. The context is a ritual of the Hattian spring festival of Puruli.

See also Etymology of eel. Illuyanka is probably a compound, consisting of two words for “snake”, Proto-Indo-European *h₁illu- and *h₂eng(w)eh₂-. The same compound members, inverted, appear in Latin anguilla “eel”. The *h₁illu- word is cognate to English eel, the anka- word to Sanskrit ahi. Also this dragon is known as Illujanka and Illuyankas.

The Hittite texts were introduced in 1930 by W. Porzig, who first made the comparison of Teshub’s battle with Illuyankas with the sky-god Zeus’ battle with serpent-like Typhon, told in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke (I.6.3); the Hittite-Greek parallels found few adherents at the time, the Hittite myth of the castration of the god of heaven by Kumarbi, with its clearer parallels to Greek myth, not having yet been deciphered and edited.

The Baal Cycle is a Ugaritic cycle of stories about the Canaanite god Baal, also known as Hadad—the god of rain, storm and fertility. They are written in Ugaritic, a language written in a cuneiform alphabet, on a series of clay tablets found in the 1920s in the Tell of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia, far ahead of the now known coast. The stories include The Myth of Baal-Aliyan and The Death of Baal.

The death of Baal and the reign of Mot does not appear to be a seasonal myth. Rather, it represents “a special catastrophe of drought and infertility when the rain does not come in its season”.

To El and Anat, Baal’s death is unusual and strikes them with deep sorrow. “They both exclaim, “Baʿal is dead! What becomes of the people?/ Dagân’s son! What of the multitudes?” Also, they need a substitute for Baʿal.”

Tammuz (Akkadian: Duʾzu, Dūzu; Sumerian: Dumuzid (DUMU.ZI(D), “faithful or true son”) was the name of a Sumerian god of food and vegetation, also worshiped in the later Mesopotamian states of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia.

In Babylonia, the month Tammuz was established in honor of the eponymous god Tammuz, who originated as a Sumerian shepherd-god, Dumuzid or Dumuzi, the consort of Inanna and, in his Akkadian form, the parallel consort of Ishtar.

The Aramaic name “Tammuz” seems to have been derived from the Akkadian form Tammuzi, based on early Sumerian Damu-zid. The later standard Sumerian form, Dumu-zid, in turn became Dumuzi in Akkadian. Tamuzi also is Dumuzid or Dumuzi.

The Levantine Adonis (“lord”), who was drawn into the Greek pantheon, was considered by Joseph Campbell among others to be another counterpart of Tammuz, son and consort.

Beginning with the summer solstice came a time of mourning in the Ancient Near East, as in the Aegean: the Babylonians marked the decline in daylight hours and the onset of killing summer heat and drought with a six-day “funeral” for the god.

Recent discoveries reconfirm him as an annual life-death-rebirth deity: tablets discovered in 1963 show that Dumuzi was in fact consigned to the Underworld himself, in order to secure Inanna’s release, though the recovered final line reveals that he is to revive for six months of each year.

In cult practice, the dead Tammuz was widely mourned in the Ancient Near East. Locations associated in antiquity with the site of his death include both Harran and Byblos, among others.